Erin M. Stewart

A List of Organizations’ Social Networking Guidelines

It’s no secret that social networking can be a great tool for communication. At the college I work for, we felt the need to create social networking guidelines because we noticed a large number of college accounts being created, linked to on the college web site and then only occasionally updated.

The starting point for us was to research other colleges’ social networking guidelines. I used Twitter to reach out to the #highered community and start conversations about what others were doing. I realized that the college I work for wasn’t behind and that many other colleges and universities were still in the “I know we need something, but we’re still trying to figure out the perfect approach” stage. Since online communication is much newer than print communication, even “experts” aren’t really experts in the traditional “I have a Ph.D.” or “I’ve been working in the field for 25 years” way.

The key to social networking guidelines, in my opinion at least, is that they are always considered a working document and that they make sense when compared to other organizations’ guidelines. The best way to learn is to see what others are doing. This list – http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php – is a good starting point. Taking research one step further, I recommend talking to other organizations that are similar to yours.

Also, don’t forget that social networking is an incredibly valuable tool. As you work to create guidelines, ask yourself and your team whether the guidelines encourage and improved social networking or if the guidelines would prevent people from wanting to use social networking. It’s important that guidelines encourage rather than deter individuals from getting involved with social networking for the organization.

Usability Testing Software

The college I work for is looking to do some user research on our current web site to determine if we need to change our site navigation when we start our site redesign in the spring. So far we’ve looked at Morae and Silverback. Does anyone have experience using these? Can anyone recommend other software?

Ideally we would like the software to prompt users through each task in the usability test and track at least time and clicks. I’m not sure how many other features are out there or what people have found useful/not useful, so suggestions on good vs. unnecessary features would be helpful.

Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks!

Update: I also happen to be taking a graduate course on user experience research. As part of part of a group project studying Facebook, I’m conducting usability tests. I will probably use Silverback since it has a free trial and is the cheaper of the two. I’ll post my thoughts on the product in the next few weeks after I’ve conducted the testing.

Facebook Fan Pages: Can you post too much?

Facebook fan pages have been a main point of conversation among web content owners and stakeholders at the college I work for as a Web Development and Training Specialist. In one conversation about who should own the main college Facebook fan page, someone suggested that posting daily was too much.

While I disagree with that statement, it does raise an interesting point. If you post too much, your fans might get annoyed with the amount of real estate you take up on their News Feed or the forced nature of your content. In the conversation, it was proposed that you might loose fans if you are too active. I think a more appropriate way to look at it is that there needs to be daily activity on your fan page. Facilitate conversation and interaction by posting media content – photos, videos, etc. – that people would want to look at and talk about. Mix in the promotions and news items you deem most important, but don’t post press releases, RSS feeds, etc. every few hours. Instead, post content that is unique to Facebook and more “raw” than what would go in the news section of your web site and then let your fans do the talking.

To judge what content is most successful, track what types of content gain the most “likes” and comments and what days you loose or gain multiple fans. It’s okay to do some trial and error. Not every piece of content you post will be wildy popular, but learn from the content that doesn’t seem to work and spend some time assessing why.

Ultimately, you should monitor your fan page daily – for a inappropriate content, but mostly to make sure something is happening on your page that day, even if you didn’t post it. If you have a slow day or two, figure out what you can post that will liven the page and engage fans. Create a contest for your fans or post a funny photo. Owning a Facebook fan page doesn’t have to be time consuming, but the page needs a few minutes of attention each day.

“If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers”

Earlier today, someone shared this article from Digital Survivors on the university web developer listserv. It made me laugh out loud, but at the heart of the piece is something very true – web designers are often expected to work miracles that no other profession would consider reasonable.

Check out this fun piece and see if it reminds you of anything you’ve experienced.

A Good User Experience Doesn’t Require an Expensive Consulting Firm

Recently, the New York Times education blog, “The Choice,” featured a blog post about colleges and universities creating more user-driven web sites. Colleges and universities mentioned in the blog were moving away from “newsroom” style homepages to including content that highlights the majors the college offers (what prospective students are most interested in) and featuring links to the school’s social networking accounts. Video content and financial aid calculators were other features that prospective students expected to see. So how did these colleges and universities decide to move in this direction? They started asking users what they wanted to see. While many of the colleges and universities mentioned in the blog post had hired well-known higher education web consulting firms, small colleges – like non-profits and small businesses – often lack the budget to hire expensive consulting firms. At the same time, they may also lack the in-office resources (whether staff, time, etc.) to conduct detailed research before building or updating a web site.

So what are the best ways to ensure that your site offers a positive user experience without requiring too much time or money? Here are three ideas to serve as a starting point:

1. Study Industry Trends – What is everyone else doing? This doesn’t mean that your site should look the same or have the same content as everyone else, but if you’re a college and most colleges include an obvious link to academic majors/programs offered, you probably want to make sure that students can find that content on your site.
2. Focus Groups – Get a random group of people that represent your web site’s audience together and spend an hour or two asking them what they want or expect to see on your site. Focus groups can help gather feedback on the look of a site, information that is missing and wish list items for the future of the site.
3. Usability Testing – While there are fancier ways to do this, watching someone that is not familiar with your site try to find a list of particular content on your site (without your help) can help identify pitfalls in your web site’s organization. If you are doing a redesign, consider observing various people that represent your different audiences, including some that have used the site and some that haven’t. You may find that people familiar with the site are using odd work-arounds to get to something that should be easy.

Doctors in the Digital Age

My recent stingray sting has resulted in frequent visits to doctors and now a plastic/reconstructive surgeon. I needed to send the surgeon a form for a temporary handicap parking pass so he could fill it out before my next visit. The form was posted online as a fillable pdf, so I figured it would be easiest to e-mail it to the office. The surgeon’s business card only included a phone number and a fax number, but I figured it would be worth calling to see if there was an e-mail address for the office. The receptionist seemed a bit surprised by this question and said that I’d have to fax it. This made me curious if the surgeon had a web site. He was a plastic surgeon in a wealthy area (DC suburbs) – an area where businesses really should have a web site considering the number of computers, iPhones and Blackberries that people own in the area – but did not have a web site.

Unfortunately my experience with doctors is that, if they are in a small practice – even if well established – they do not have much information posted on the web for potential patients. What is available is a large number of doctor listings and doctor ratings web sites. If ratings based on a few of a doctor’s many patients reflect negatively on the practice, the effect can be detrimental even if the practice is highly regarded. Therefore it is important to overshadow this with a web presence that is controlled by the doctor(s). Most importantly, this would include a web site (even if it’s just a few pages of static text). However, blogs, social networking sites and involvement with reputable online medical resources also provide a great online reputation boost.

As a web developer, I would recommend a basic, but modern looking web site that includes the following as a minimum web presence for a doctor:

1. Doctor’s biography/professional experience.
2. Location of the practice – include a map and general directions.
3. Contact information – preferably including an e-mail address
4. Services or specialties – this can be as simple as posting content you usually provide in brochures on the web site

Extra content to consider:

1. Quotes/referrals from patients
2. A contact form
3. Forms for new patients
4. Information about patient rights
5. Links to recommended hospitals and specialists in the area, as well as links to recommended online resources (health organizations, etc.)
6. A blog – weekly posts sharing information with patients about flu season, new medical technologies, etc. add credibility to the web site
7. Links to social networking sites, like Twitter, that the doctor(s) use for professional networking

My Stingray Sting and Online Medical Information

About two and half weeks ago, I got stung by a stingray while on vacation in Myrtle Beach, SC. I stepped on something slimy while walking out of the ocean and then felt something (what turned out to be a stingray barb) stab me in the ankle. Stingray venom causes severe pain for 24 to 48 hours. Very hot water can be used to neutralize the poison and reduce the pain. A trip to an emergency medical care place got me a tetanus shot, a painkiller shot and an x-ray to check for pieces of the stingray barb in my ankle. I was sent home after they saw nothing on the x-ray with an antibiotic prescription and instruction to continue using hot water. After four days, my family was concerned about the appearance of the wound and surrounding areas and the swelling of my ankle, so we went back to see a doctor. The doctor we saw said it looked like it was healing fine and basically sent me home. Six days after that (10 days since the sting) I woke up with severe pain in my ankle and decided to go to a doctor. The doctor gave me some shots, a prescription for a stronger antibiotic and had me come back the next morning. She was concerned about infection and possible complications from the swelling. The next morning (Thursday) there was no improvement, so she sent me to a plastic/reconstructive surgeon. Thursday’s appointment involved a local anesthetic and the surgeon cutting open the wound to remove dead tissue, drain it and clean it. He had me return on Friday and Monday for him to repeat the procedure. I expect he’ll do the same thing on Friday and I will require more appointments and eventually a skin graft (because too much of the area around the wound died). I also had to get an ultrasound of my ankle to make sure no pieces of the stingray barb remained in my ankle because an x-ray apparently may not show pieces of the bard based on their composition. The puncture wound from the stingray sting is between 1/2 inch and 3/4 inch deep and the surrounding area (dead tissue) has been removed repeatedly to prevent another infection. The surgeon told me that best case scenario this ordeal would be done in one month to six weeks.

Over the past 2 and a half weeks since the initial stingray sting, numerous iPhones and laptops have been pulled out to do research related to stingray stings by family, friends and myself. Some of the research was out of curiousity and some was for evaluation of my current symptoms. Unfortunately, information about stingray stings is limited. Many sources explain that hot water neutralizes the poison but that little is known about the actual stingray venom because of the difficulty in obtaining samples. Most online resources explained that a trip to the ER, a tetanus shot, an x-ray and hot water were the key steps. I did all of these and a follow up, but still ended up with complications. While digging deeper over the past view days, I was able to find firsthand accounts of infection and tendon damage, but I could not find anything that described what my ankle looked or felt like and then pointed to needing to see a surgeon to drain the wound and remove dead tissue (which is a breeding ground for bacteria and infection). Limited online information combined with a doctor that said my wound was healing well caused my end result to be worse because I did not think I needed more medical attention.

This whole situation (and the fact that I’m less than two weeks from starting my masters degree program in Information Management) made me realize that too often we assume that there is good information available online for various issues and if there is information, we assume consistency across multiple sources adds credibility or suggests the content is all-inclusive. Obviously this is not the case and occasionally even specific Google search results return no results. However, as internet users, how are we supposed to know when websites, blog posts, etc. are detailed and what provides only part of the story? Of course, this could be responded to in part by saying common sense would dictate that there can always be more to a story or another point of view, but how do we, as internet users, know when to challenge a cross-section of in-person help (in this case from doctors) and online information if everything we hear seems consistent and logical?

I plan to expand more on this idea over the next week and perhaps through the fall semester as I begin taking classes, but would be interested to hear other stories that people have where online information (that in some cases may even be cross-referenced with in-person advice or knowledge sharing) gave a false sense of security resulting in a problem.

PSD Web Mock Up Checklist: Before Sending to an HTML/CSS Coder

PSD to HTML/CSS services are rather common. This service means that a client will provide a mock up in a Photoshop file (PSD) to a web developer and the web developer will code the web design in HTML and CSS.

A few weeks ago I offered to code a site for a family member. Her hobby of making cakes had turned into something she could occasionally profit from and wanted to a have a web site. She already had a general design idea for her business materials and had some experience with Adobe Photoshop, so she was going to send me a PSD file of her web mock up and I was going to code the HTML and CSS template. The PSD was okay for the most part, but the width was a random number of pixels and their were some layout aspects that wouldn’t work well in HTML and CSS. I sent her a list of things that I recommended changing with a brief explanation for each thing and she had no problem with making the few changes.

Whether you are a designer that plans to send your PSD to someone else or a web developer that plans to code PSDs, here is a basic checklist to keep in mind:

1. Outline the content you need to include on the web site before designing. Think about how many menu items your site will have and how much or little text each page will include. These needs can dramatically impact your design needs.
2. If the web site will be a fixed width, make sure the PSD mock up reflects that width. Also, be sure to specify the background color for space beyond that fixed width. Common widths are 800 pixels, 900 pixels and 1024 pixels.
3. Make sure the design you send is the final product. This may seem obvious, but if you actually want a gradient instead of a solid background, the PSD should reflect that. PSD to HTML and CSS services are cheaper than full web design and development services because the design work is already done by the client.
4. Make sure the layout spacing is logical and exactly what you want the end product to look like. Remember that a cluttered web site can deter you audience from clicking through your all of your web pages.
5. Pick fonts that are easy to read. There are tons of sites that discuss web typography. Do your research.
6. Avoid designs that require important words – site titles, menu items, etc. – to be images rather that HTML text. Using text in HTML headings, etc. can help improve your search engine rankings.
7. Extra features are not assumed. Remember that your PSD file may not capture everything you dream of for your web site. If you want the web designer or developer to add your twitter feed to a section of the template or a fancy photo gallery for a portfolio page, specify this when you request an estimate for the project.

Please feel free to post questions in the comments section below.

New Web Design: Start with Inspiration

Whether you’re building a new web site or embarking on a web redesign, a good place to start is finding inspiration. Search the web for “web design inspiration” and the results will be endless. Generic design inspiration can help you get a sense of your likes and dislikes. Next, look at other sites that are in the same industry or serve the same purpose as your web site. You may find clear industry standards and decide that you want to be consistent with your competitors or you may decide you want to stand out by taking on a more unique design approach. Bookmark or make a list of your favorites and then compare the sites to identify common trends. This list of common trends on site that you like will be useful when designing your site or working with a web designer.

In addition to using web sites as inspiration, also look at magazines and other print items from the same industry or that serve the same purpose as your web site. Make a list of trends, upcoming trends and layouts that you like. Also note artistic elements and colors that catch your eye. Check out a color inspiration web sites for color palette inspiration that is consistent with the web sites and print pieces that you made note of during your research.

You may find that you like a lot of different styles and colors. The next step is to think about what your site needs to say and identify the design trends and colors that match that message. Your end goal is to choose one concept for your web site, so it’s likely that you’ll have things on your lists that don’t make it into your design. Save notes, links and cut outs of inspiration that didn’t get incorportated into your web site in a folder – you never know when you’ll want to refer to this research.

Create a final inspiration document that includes the purpose of your site, the color scheme, the overall style or look and what inspired the site. After you’ve created this document, take a break. It’s important to walk away for awhile or even a few days. This helps you confirm that you’re happy with your design concept before you start creating the web design mock up.

What Happens If I Tweet More Than 140 Characters?

At a family reunion this weekend, I was sitting around a table with some of my cousins who are all in college. Someone made a reference to Twitter and my sister asked, “What happens if I tweet more than 140 characters?” My boyfriend, who is in his mid twenties, sacrastically replied, “Your house blows up.” There were laughs around the table, but the question was serious.

There are many ways to use Twitter effectively and each organization or individual may have a different way that Twitter would serve them best. There are plenty of resources to help people find their way on Twitter, but getting started can be an overwhelming task. Afterall, how do you determine if the first article you find about using Twitter is addressing the way you should be using Twitter. The first step is figuring out how Twitter works – and of course confirming that your house won’t blow up if you see a red “-1″ for the character count of a tweet. Don’t worry, it won’t. The second step is figuring out what your goal if for using Twitter and determining what approach to Twitter will help you achieve that goal.

In future posts, I hope to take a humorous look at how to find your way through Twitter while also breaking down the different approaches you can take and how to determine the right approach for your needs. Be sure to subscribe via e-mail to keep up with my latest posts.

What’s the funniest question/answer you’ve heard about Twitter?